Comments on: A Fire in the House: HIV/AIDS in the Deep Southhttp://blog.aidsunited.org/2012/03/a-fire-in-the-house-hivaids-in-the-deep-south/
Insights by and for AIDS United stakeholdersWed, 14 May 2014 20:41:39 +0000hourly1http://wordpress.org/?v=3.5By: Janet Johnsonhttp://blog.aidsunited.org/2012/03/a-fire-in-the-house-hivaids-in-the-deep-south/#comment-641
Janet JohnsonThu, 26 Apr 2012 21:16:01 +0000http://blog.aidsunited.org/?p=2174#comment-641Maura,

Well girl you made me cry. I can never tell you enough how much I appreciated your trip here to Alabama and the opportunity to meet all of you and share my story with you. Thank you all for coming, thank you all for caring, thank you all for seeing for yourselves what is going on here. I agree that the third world countries need our help but I also believe that we are suppose to take care of our own first before we reach out to others. Have you ever heard the ole saying ” Sweep around your own backdoor before you start sweeping around someone else’s”? I am a firm believer in helping our neighbors and doing the right thing but as you said “there’s a fire in the home”, and we need to put this baby out.

I had joined your group on line because you deal with the issues of HIV/AIDS but never in my wildest dreams did I think I would be Blessed and Fortunate to meet y’all good people. Let me get Southern now. I would love to send in whatever you are asking for to maybe win a trip to the International Conference on AIDS in July (my birthday month) and share my story but I don’t think I have the strategy part figured out. I have applied with several organizations for a scholarship but to no avail. I guess it just wasn’t meant to be and the way I read the qualifications I would need to be an organization to receive some $25,000. But boy what I could do with that. I would give back to the organizations here in town who have given so freely to me and guaranteed me a life worth living. It’s hard living on a fixed income especially when part of your income only comes in when it wants to.

I appreciate y’all getting to visit my home before you left Alabama. I want to apologize for it and myself being such a mess that morning. I was really having a very stressful bad day. Maybe y’all can come back again when I am more myself and my house is more presentable.

I could go on and on but I have said enough for now. I just wanted to say thank you all for coming and allowing those of us who are positive to speak for ourselves and those who can’t /won’t speak for themselves because of stigma, discrimination, and fear.

Sincerely & from the bottom of my heart,

Janet Johnson
PLWHA in Alabama

]]>By: Linda Shttp://blog.aidsunited.org/2012/03/a-fire-in-the-house-hivaids-in-the-deep-south/#comment-640
Linda SWed, 25 Apr 2012 00:56:24 +0000http://blog.aidsunited.org/?p=2174#comment-640WOW! I just saw this today, Maura this is powerful nd yes I’m in the fight with you. The unjust and lack of quality that many of my HIV+ peers live in in the southern state of this country is sad and heart breaking. I am glad to know that fire is burning in our belly again I wish many or half of us would get off our seats of complacency and ACT NOW! Step Up and fight again. It’s sad that o many have died with fire and we live fire free. When I think of the omen and families in the South I begin to dream of tools to smuggle in to show them how to break free, free from the bondage of shame and despair that this disease have bought to an already hurting community of people.
So yes let’s fight, let’s raise our VOICES, let’s create change. I want to tell my sons, daughters and grand-children I did what was right and even in the face of fear God gave me strength to create change and to show love as an action to help others. So again thank you and AIDS United for the commitment to end AIDS and leaving no stones unturned.

Linda.

]]>By: Paurvihttp://blog.aidsunited.org/2012/03/a-fire-in-the-house-hivaids-in-the-deep-south/#comment-630
PaurviSat, 24 Mar 2012 14:51:12 +0000http://blog.aidsunited.org/?p=2174#comment-630Thanks, Maura – You so beautifully capture what many of us felt coming away from this trip. It’s so clear that HIV/AIDS forces us to face the weaknesses in our society, and in this instance, at home…our home – not somewhere else, helping some one else. Each of us as employers, community members, activists, neighbors, concerned friends and family must get involved- tell one more person, learn about one more organization, and support as best we can. If there were ever a time to drop complacency, it is now. The fire has spread to the belly… it’s time to come together and put out the fire at home, indeed.
]]>By: Douglashttp://blog.aidsunited.org/2012/03/a-fire-in-the-house-hivaids-in-the-deep-south/#comment-628
DouglasFri, 23 Mar 2012 18:23:13 +0000http://blog.aidsunited.org/?p=2174#comment-628Maura,
Thanks for this powerful commentary on our trip. On my first trip to South Africa, I was keenly aware of feeling a deep connection to the place and the people. It felt like home. Along with some other committed people, we made a small difference in building leadership among people living with HIV. I was “born and raised” in Georgia, less than 200 miles from where we were in Alabama. It’s definitely my homeland. Like you, I cannot stand idly by and, as Will reminds us, be appallingly silent.

Onward

]]>By: Willhttp://blog.aidsunited.org/2012/03/a-fire-in-the-house-hivaids-in-the-deep-south/#comment-627
WillWed, 21 Mar 2012 15:20:09 +0000http://blog.aidsunited.org/?p=2174#comment-627Wonderful Maura!
On this day, the 47th anniversary of Dr. King’s embarkation upon his final march from Selma to Montgomery, your powerful words compel me to invoke my favorite of Dr. King’s admonitions:

“We will have to repent in this generation not merely for the hateful words and actions of the bad people but for the appalling silence of the good people.”

King penned this line while sitting in a Birmingham jail cell, roughly 85 miles north of where I now sit outside our telemedicine clinic in Selma.

Thank you, Maura (and AIDS United), for not sitting idly by, for not relying upon the professed panacea of time, for not maintaining an appalling silence, but for standing beside those living with HIV/AIDS in the deep south and for lending your powerful voice to the cause of MAO and our sister organizations.

History will record (and, no doubt, your children will recount) that you did the right thing at a time when the right thing seemed impossibly difficult. For this, you remain my hero.